Fedora 9 quirks and solutions

Having tested F9 (using Gnome) during 5 reinstalls for testing purposes, both 64 bit and 32 bit versions, I encountered some strange things which I solved as below. I hope someone will benefit from it while searching for a solution.1.Bluetooth problem/errorAfter having installed all Bluetooth related packages for Gnome, trying to use the "Browse Device..." right click menu option (Bluetooth icon in notification area) you'll still get an error message:[quote]Error: DBus error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)Please select another viewer and try again.[/quote]Solution:Edit "/etc/sysconfig/bluetooth" and make sure it says 'HID2HCI_ENABLE=true'andHID2HCI_UNDO=true. This probably means uncommenting them both. (erasing the # in front of it)Next go to System > Administration > Services:Make sure both the Bluetooth service is runing (it probably already is) and the 'pand' service (it probably is not running).Next reboot and your Bluetooth works. 2.sound gone after rebootAfter a fresh boot you do not have any sound anymore, while the last evening before powering down you had?Solution:Having encountered this weird behaviour with three different installs (two 32 bit installs and one 64 bit install) it's simple to circumvent:Just install the below packages and reboot afterwards, you'll have sound back:[u]Packages[/u]:padevchooserpaprefspulseaudio-libs-zeroconfpulseaudio-module-zeroconfand as dependency install : gconfmm26note: it occasionally can happen sound still disappears. If so reboot and in nine out of ten cases it'll be back. If you're unlucky and it still isn't back, do a cold boot from start, that should bring it back up.3.Firefox icon replaced and no plugins all of a suddenAfter having followed the MJM install guide ( [url="http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f9.html"]http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f9.html[/url] ), you want to start FF. While clicking the usual panels icon at the same time you see the orange fox icon has been replaced by a 'world' icon which tells you 'systems web browser' or something alike. Clicking it does indeed start FF but there are no plugins to be seen anywhere... and just a few moments ago you installed them all and checked them in 'about:plugins' where they showed up... Solution:Goto Applications > Internet > Firefox Web Browser, right click on it and select 'Add this application to panel'. A new FF icon with the normal usual icon appears at the panel, delete the 'world' icon.Click the now normalized FF icon and FF starts including the extensions and plug ins. 4.Enable 'tap to click on touchpad'.Tap on touchpad doesn't work.uname -r: 2.6.25.3-18.fc9.i686synaptics installed, version : synaptics-0.14.6-7.fc9.i386.rpmsystem used: 32 bits versionsolution:Get an updated synaptics package at this address: (direct download link)[url="http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bobk/packages/synaptics-0.14.6-8.1.fc9.i386.rpm"]http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bobk/packages....1.fc9.i386.rpm[/url]Install it through clicking (or double clicking) on it.Get and install the gsynaptics package:Reboot.After the boot, go to System > Preferences > Hardware > Touchpad,gsynaptics opens up; Set your adjustments to your likings, close gsynaptics.Now the touchpads tapping works.(source : [url="http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1018101#post1018101"]http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.p...101#post1018101[/url] ,post nr. 9)system used: 64 bits versionGet an updated synaptics package at this address: (direct download link)[url="http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bobk/packages/synaptics-0.14.6-8.1.fc9.i386.rpm"]http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bobk/packages....1.fc9.i386.rpm[/url]Install it through clicking (or double clicking) on it.Get and install the gsynaptics package:Open up a Terminal and:Add the below code in red:[quote]Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Default Layout" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "TouchPad" "CorePointer"EndSection#Another section for TouchpadSection "InputDevice" Identifier "Touchpad" Driver "synaptics" Option "SendCoreEvents" Option "Protocol" "auto-dev" Option "TapButton1" "1" Option "TapButton2" "2" Option "TapButton3" "3" Option "SHMConfig" "on"EndSection[/quote]Reboot.After the boot, go to System > Preferences > Hardware > Touchpad,gsynaptics opens up; Set your adjustments to your likings, close gsynaptics.Now the touchpads tapping works.5.Mplayer does not respond when trying to open while it's sure it is installed and it is in the menu tree.solution:Open up a terminal and enter:You should see some messages, upon them one or more error messages...The culprit on my system was this one:[quote]The flip-hebrew option can't be used in a config file.Error parsing option flip-hebrew=no at line 133[/quote]Run the following command from the same terminal to fix this:- if you use sudo:if you use the normal su sequence:(this comments out line 133 in file /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf)Close the opened windows and exit out of the terminal.Go to Applications > Sound and Video > Mplayer : it should open up now without any problems.6.Firefox + Youtube : clicking the video on youtube to open it does the video vanish completely.note: audio seems not to be stable in all circumstances probably due to the use of PulseAudio and/or Flash/libflashsupport. When it happens audio just vanishes, reboot . If that doesn't help, power down and do a cold boot after a few minutes. (I have seen this once since I installed F9: I had to do the cold boot trick.) I'm still scratching my head about this one ...solution:[u]For the FF 3.0.5b2[/u] version which comes installed by default :What plugins do you have installed in FF ? (open up 'about:plugins' (without quotes) in address bar)What extensions do you have installed in FF ? (open up the Tools menu item > Add-ons)You probably have everything installed which you could lay your hands on.The plugins/extensions I have tested and installed which result in a working Youtube are as follows:Plugins- DivX Browser Plug-In Gecko Media Player 0.6.1- gecko-mediaplayer 0.6.1 Gecko Media Player 0.6.1- iTunes Application Detector - Java(tm) Plug-in 1.6.0_06-b02 Java(tm) Plug-in 1.6.0_06- QuickTime Plug-in 6.0 / 7 Gecko Media Player 0.6.1- RealPlayer 9 Gecko Media Player 0.6.1- Shockwave Flash Shockwave Flash 9.0 r124- Windows Media Player Plug-in Gecko Media Player 0.6.1note: several plugins come within one package, Gecko Media Player. Extensions- Abduction! 2.019- Adblock Plus 0.7.5.4 <<<<< note: remove youtube from the filters list ***- Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper 1.0.4- CacheViewer 0.4.7- CustomizeGoogle 0.72- DownloadHelper 3.0.4- Extension List Dumper 1.13.1- Fission 0.9.7.1- Flashblock 1.5.6- McAfee SiteAdvisor 26.5- No-Referer 1.3.1- ShowIP 0.8.08r14b0251- Throbber Button 1.0- User Agent Switcher 0.6.11- View Dependencies 0.3.3.0***: or right click on the ABP shield in FF's toolbar and check 'Disable on Youtube'.It's obvious the Adblock extensions filter entry was the culprit here. Youtube is working now.See also the next item when trying to play back the resulting .flv file on your system with Mplayer.7.Youtube video downloaded: trying to playback with Mplayer results in crash, freeze of system and/or error message with stroboscopic effect on screen,machine from now on does not respond anymore within this session until a hard reset and/or reboot.One of the error messages displayed through the stroboscopic effect reads like this:[quote][AO_Alsa]unable to find simple control 'PCM',0.[/quote]Other observations while this happens:- displayed video is OK regarding displayed quality but it starts to stutter- the hard disk drive starts to work and rattle like a madmansolution:At Mplayers preferences go to the Audio tab and check 'enable software mixer'. This one did the trick for me.Another solution mentioned in MJMs Install guide is : Preferences > Audio > Available drivers:, Select pulse.8.Glipper crashes on booting FedoraProblem is known around the net, not only in Fedora but others also, e.g. Ubuntu.A real solution is not known yet. Maybe get rid of Glipper for now and replace it by Parcellite if you can get your hands on it.I have tested Parcellite ,uninstalled Glipper and removed .glipper from the /home directory.Parcellite hasn't let me down yet, it just does what it has to do. I use it now standard as the default clipboard manager Parcellite can be found at :[url="http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/7360055/com/parcellite-0.7-2.fc10.i386.rpm.html"]http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idp...0.i386.rpm.html[/url]Direct download link:[url="ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/i386/os/Packages/parcellite-0.7-2.fc10.i386.rpm"]ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/download.fedor...2.fc10.i386.rpm[/url]After install start it up via Applications > Accessoires > Parcellite.It reveals its head in the notification area as 'Clipboard Manager'.Its common info page can be found at:[url="http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php/Parcellite"]http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php/Parcellite[/url]note: Thanks to a tip from Urmas : Desktop Data Manager from [url="http://data-manager.sourceforge.net/index.html"]http://data-manager.sourceforge.net/index.html[/url] is another option to try . 9.Adobe Flash plugin won't install / initialize on 64 bits version with FF 3.0.5bTrying to initialize:shows this error message:[quote]NSPlugin Viewer *** ERROR: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/librhythmbox-itms-detection-plugin.so: undefined symbol: __gxx_personality_v0[/quote]The problem is Rhythmbox which conflicts with it. Get rid of it and the problem is solved. Do this:Or when you already did the above and you ended up at the initialize stage with the above mentioned error message, do this:Open up FF, type about:plugins in the address bar and notice the Flash plugin is there:[quote]File name: nswrapper_32_64.libflashplayer.so Shockwave Flash 9.0 r124[/quote] source: [url="http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/redhat-fedora-linux-help/121767-solved-fedora-9-flash-plugin-wont-install-6.html"]http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/redhat-fe...-install-6.html[/url] 10.Drives of system suddenly showing up on Desktop (Gnome) after update.ProblemYou had a clean Desktop without showing any icons.You then updated your system and after a reboot the Desktop was bombarded with icons of the drives in your system. By changing the [u]nautilus volumes_visible[/u] setting in gconf, you can get rid of all the volumes icons on your Desktop, however this also prevents from being displayed an icon when you insert a SD drive or Flash drive in the slots on your computer. That's not what you want, you just want to get rid of those icons on your Desktop that did not show up previously.SolutionSeems the developers at Gnome bring themselves deeper into problems with every new thing they can think of, because they seem to be showing the habit of just throwing axes at the user without asking them first... This time, with an update they just left out a file (which was present before the update or at least on the previous release F8) which prevented the problem described above from rearing its ugly head. Howto solve it:Open up a terminal and create the file below:Copy the below in it:[quote]<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- -*- SGML -*- --> <deviceinfo version="0.2"><device> <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.hotpluggable" bool="false"> <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.removable" bool="false"> <merge key="volume.ignore" type="bool">true</merge> </match> </match></device></deviceinfo>[/quote]Save the file, close gedit, close all open applications incl. the terminal and reboot the system.Problem solved.source: [url="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=384201"]https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=384201[/url]* * * * *Whenever I encounter other weird things, I'll post them above when I found a solution for it.